GOP turns to glossy inserts to get message above the fray

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This is the point in the presidential race where voters have been slammed with so many TV ads that campaign strategists wonder how they can possibly cut through the clamor.

And that can lead to some unorthodox tactics.

In a retro move for a new media age, one conservative super PAC is spending more than $1 million in Wisconsin and four other battlegrounds on a breezy, pro-Romney, 12-page color "magazine" to insert into daily and weekly newspapers. It features boosterish profiles of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and even comes with a campaign-themed crossword puzzle (clue for 1 Down is the "the burger company where Paul Ryan worked as a kid").

"We're trying to get outside the clutter box," says Will Feltus, who did media buying and targeting for the 2004 George W. Bush re-election effort and is now working on the $10 million independent ad campaign funded by conservative billionaire Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade.

A lot of that $10 million has gone into TV, radio and online ads. But the newspaper insert, so popular with big retailers, is an unusual vehicle for a political campaign. The group's rationale is twofold: The airwaves are almost hopelessly saturated with TV spots, and newspaper readers are highly cost-effective targets for political communications because of their propensity to vote.

The group, Ending Spending Action Fund, says it has printed more than 4 million inserts for distribution in Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Virginia and Florida. They will show up in some weekly papers on Thursday and daily papers on Sunday.

"The basic idea is that print is the new 'new media,' " says Feltus, citing data from Scarborough Research that shows the correlation between voting and media consumption is stronger for newspaper use than for TV, radio or the Internet.

In other words, heavy newspaper readers are far more likely to vote than light newspaper readers. The pattern is a little weaker in the case of TV viewing, and almost nonexistent in the case of radio (frequent radio listeners aren't more likely to vote than infrequent listeners).

Campaigns have been escalating their advertising on newspaper websites. But print advertising in presidential races is typically quite limited. The Romney campaign has placed a schedule of section-front political ads in the Journal Sentinel print edition between now and election day, itself unusual. The Obama campaign has been advertising in newspapers with targeted audiences, such as Latinos or African-Americans.

Feltus says he has believed for some time that newspapers were an "undervalued political advertising opportunity."

"The best predictor of whether somebody is going to vote or not is whether or not they read the newspaper. Newspaper readers tend to be older, therefore they are more likely to vote. They're also obviously interested in news and politics," said Feltus, though he added, "There's a lot of skepticism in the industry (about it), that it's old-fashioned, everyone's on the Internet. . . . When I've raised this in other meetings in the past with other clients, somebody will say, 'Print's not emotional enough.' "

The 12-page insert produced by the super PAC is soft and chatty in tone by modern political standards, with biographical features on Romney and running mate Ryan of Wisconsin, brief highlights about celebrity Romney supporters such as Jack Nicklaus and Jon Voight, lots of family photos. It's full of anecdotes, including a retelling of how Romney led an effort to track down the missing daughter of a partner at Bain Capital 16 years ago.

"Television rates have gotten so high and the TV airwaves are so saturated with ads, and frankly voters are tired of them," said Brian Baker, president of the super PAC.

But television remains by far the dominant medium for presidential campaign ads, with digital and radio far behind.

The Wesleyan Media Project reported Wednesday that more than 900,000 general election ads have aired on broadcast and national cable TV in this presidential campaign. That's up 45% from 2008, even though the advertising is concentrated in fewer markets because the electoral playing field has shrunk, with only nine states seeing a significant level of television spending. Since Oct. 1, Denver has seen the most presidential ads of any market in the U.S.: 9,950. The top market in Wisconsin, Milwaukee, has seen 4,418 ads in the past three weeks.

"When all is said and done, 2012 will go down as a record-pulverizing year for political advertising," said Erika Franklin Fowler, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project.